Cecil Rhodes eBook

CHAPTER X.

AN ESTIMATE OF SIR ALFRED MILNER

The conditions under which Sir Alfred Milner found
himself compelled to shape his policy of conciliation
were beset with obstacles and difficulties. An
understanding of these is indispensable to the one
who would read aright the history of that period of
Imperial evolution.

The question of the refugees who overwhelmed Cape
Colony with their lamentations, after they had been
obliged to leave the Transvaal at the beginning of
the hostilities—­the claims of the Rand
multi-millionaires—­the indignation of the
Dutch Colonists confined in concentration camps by
order of the military authorities—­the Jingoes
who thought it would be only right to shoot down every
Dutch sympathiser in the country: these were
among the things agitating the South African public
mind, and setting up conflicting claims impossible
of adjustment without bitter censure on one hand or
the other. The wonder is that, amid all these
antagonistic elements, Sir Alfred Milner contrived
to fulfil the larger part of the tasks which he had
sketched out for himself before he left England.

The programme which Sir Alfred planned to carry out
proved, in the long run, to have been thoroughly sound
in conception and practice, because it contained in
embryo all the conditions under which South Africa
became united. It is remarkable, indeed, that
such a very short time after a war which seemed altogether
to have compromised any hope of coalescing, the Union
of South Africa should have become an accomplished
fact.

Yet, strange as it may appear, it is certain that
up to his retirement from office Sir Alfred Milner
was very little known in South Africa. He had
been so well compelled by force of circumstances to
lead an isolated life that very few had opportunity
to study his character or gain insight into his personality.
In Cape Town he was judged by his policy. People
forgot that all the time he was at Government House,
Cape Town, he was a man as well as a politician:
a man whose efforts and work in behalf of his country
deserved some kind of consideration even from his enemies.
It is useless to discuss whether Sir Alfred did or
did not make mistakes before the beginning of the
war. Why waste words over events which cannot
be helped, and about which there will always be two
opinions? Personally, I think that his errors
were essentially of the kind which could not have
been avoided, and that none of them ever compromised
ultimately the great work which he was to bring to
a triumphant close.